1. Field of the Invention
This application relates generally to optical waveguide gyroscopes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent investigations have shown that slow light can have a profound impact on the optical properties of materials and systems. In particular, under certain conditions, the sensitivity of interferometric sensors can be in principle greatly enhanced by interrogating the interferometer with slow light. See, e.g., M. Soljacic, S. G. Johnson, S. Fan, M. Ibanescu, E. Ippen, and J. D. Joannopoulos, “Photonic-crystal slow-light enhancement of nonlinear phase sensitivity,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. B Vol. 19, 2052-2059 (2002). This intriguing property has a number of physical origins, depending on the nature of the waveguide and of the perturbation applied to it. However, irrespective of the exact origin, the sensitivity of a number of different sensors has been shown to scale like the reciprocal of the group velocity. Since slow light can be characterized by an extremely large group index (>105), its use can in principle improve the sensitivity of optical sensors by many orders of magnitude. Although not all sensors benefit in terms of sensitivity from this slow-light enhancement, this prospect has far-reaching implications for many applications.